If you notice a significant change in your subscriber count within the next few days, don't be alarmed - this is due to a fix we are running to rectify a bug which has affected subscriber counts on some users' channels. Normally, when a user subscribes/unsubscribes from your channel, this change is reflected in your subscriber count almost immediately. We discovered an issue which was preventing these numbers from being updated. We expect the fix to take just a few days to reach affected accounts. Once it is complete, everyone's channels will reflect the current and accurate number of subscribers.

On June 7 the UEFA Euro 2008 Football Championships kicks off, with Switzerland (who share hosting duties with Austria) taking on the Czech Republic in Basel. Over the following 23 days the 16 finalist countries will play 31 games to see who gets to raise the trophy – and enjoy bragging rights across Europe until 2012.

One of the defining characteristics of the European Championships is its unpredictability. Since its launch in 1960, the 12 stagings of the event have produced nine different winners – a fact that seems to drive players to produce some of the best football of their careers (for some reason Paul Gascoigne in 1996 springs to mind…) and whip fans into a frenzy.

Where YouTube sees excitement, it sees opportunity. Cue our 23 Days programme, which is designed to share your skills, passion and football knowledge with the wider world. To this end channels have been set up in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands and Russia – not to mention a pan-European channel – designed to showcase users’ football skills (All About Football), their passion for the game (Fans In Action) and their analysis of the on-pitch action (Football Reporter).

So, whether you dream of representing your country in the competition, are intent on cheering your team on to victory or want to talk through the drama as it unfolds, 23 Days is for you. Head for the channel, do your thing and who knows – maybe the world will get to experience an important slice of Euro 2008 through your eyes.

Every year 210,000 individuals are reported missing in the UK -- two-thirds of whom are classed as young people. In a bid to raise their profile and support the efforts being made to find them, Sunday, May 25, has been named International Missing Children’s Day and YouTube UK is happy to help support the Missing People organisation’s ongoing efforts to reunite friends and families.

Missing People – formerly known as the National Missing Persons Helpline – set up its channel on YouTube on December 8, 2006. On average it features 10-15 profiles of missing people a month and currently has 94 active campaigns running. Since its launch, 39 of the people featured on the channel have been found, but the organisation clearly has a mountain to climb.

So, in a bid to help Missing People in its efforts – and in order to salute its innovative and overwhelmingly positive use of YouTube – why not head to their page, have a look through the profiles and think about subscribing. You never know, you may be in a position to help someone as a direct result.

It's time for another round of site updates. We added some new features to improve searching for videos, inbox and managing your contacts on YouTube. Find out more below...

QUERY SUGGESTIONS FOR SEARCH

A query suggestions option is now available for search. To opt in, click the "advanced" link next to the search button, then choose "Display query suggestions as I type" from the search settings. As you type in your search terms a menu will appear with suggested results to choose from to help you find the videos you're looking for more quickly. On the search results page you'll also get an additional list of recommended searches by clicking on any of the terms listed next to the new "Also Try" menu.

GOOGLE CONTACT IMPORTER

To import your Google contacts into YouTube, click "Import" on the "My Contacts" page, then log in to your Google account. Once we've finished importing, click "Share" to easily send a video you're watching to any of your contacts. You can even "friend" your YouTube contacts and we'll help you stay up to date on the videos they're favouriting, rating, and uploading.

INBOX IMPROVEMENTS FOR COMMENTS

Based on your feedback, we've made some improvements to the notifications for video comments in your YouTube Inbox. Comments made to your videos are separated from comments left in response to your comment on someone else's video. The actual text of the comment is also now displayed and you can approve or reject a comment in-line.

Thanks to Pzottolo for another video version of our latest site update:

Don't forget to share your feedback with us via video, email or throw some comments on this here blog.

Unless you bag a parliamentary seat in a by-election or scrap your way to the upper echelons of the news media, opportunities to directly ask pertinent questions of a Prime Minister are few and far between. This is a state of affairs that makes the latest developments on the 10 Downing Street channel all the more striking… and more than a little exciting.

From today, we are happy to announce that the channel will run a regular series of “Ask The PM” Q&A sessions with Gordon Brown. YouTube UK users will have the opportunity to submit questions, the wider community can vote for their favourites, and these will then be put to the premier.

You are free to submit your videos from today, the voting phase of “Ask The PM” kicks in on Monday (May 26) and we will find out how the Prime Minister fields your testers towards the end of June. Three things to remember: include your name, age and location either in the video itself or in the video description; try to keep your questions to 30 seconds; and only UK-based users are eligible to take part.

We look forward to learning more about the issues that matter to you and seeing how you choose to present them. All that’s left for us to say is: Order! Order in the House! Let the Right Honourable Gentleman record, edit and upload his response…

Generally speaking, Cannes is considered the grand-mère of all film festivals. For 11 days every spring, the cinematic world descends on this beach town in the south of France to celebrate everything film, from the lowest-budget student shorts to the summer's biggest blockbusters.

Starting today and for the next 11 days, we'll be featuring a diverse selection of content from the French Riviera in our Film & Animation section, including industry panels from the Short Film Corner and the 2008 Real Ideas Studio Community Documentary Challenge, which consists of short works from the best student documentarians.

Finally, what would the world's most glamorous festival be without coverage from the red carpet, courtesy of IFC? With Clint Eastwood, Charlie Kaufman and Steven Soderbergh in the running for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize, and world premieres from Stephen Spielberg and Woody Allen, there should be plenty to talk about.

So tune in to YouTube throughout the festival and get those cameras rolling. Whether you were there or not, we want to hear your perspectives on Cannes -- the films, the fashions, the French fabulousness!

Today is Pangea Day, a global event dedicated to bringing people together through film. With its eclectic mix of movies, live music and passionate speakers, Pangea Day aims to help us see life through the eyes of others. There are live events taking place right now in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro.

But don't worry if you live far from any of these cities or couldn't make the actual festivities: On today's YouTube homepage, you'll find a sampling of the 24 short films being featured in the Pangea Day program. Selected by Pangea Day's international competition from over 2,500 submissions from over 100 countries - many of which came from YouTubers heeding last year's call for entries - these films inform and inspire, and provide a taste of what this event is all about.

Pangea Day has also set up an official YouTube group for you to share your thoughts about the videos on the homepage. And if you were able to make it to one of the live broadcasts, then go on and tell us about that, too.

The Short Film Corner at Cannes is one of the world's premier destinations for shorts. But you don't need to make the trip to France to see the best of what the festival has to offer, thanks to the National Film Board of Canada's Online Film Competition Cannes 2008.

In its fourth year, the contest features ten shorts, selected from among 650 films from over 40 countries. Representing an eclectic mix of languages and genres, the finalists are all available for viewing on the NFB's YouTube channel. The prize? In addition to bragging rights, the director of the winning short film will receive a professional DV camera and a portable computer with post-production software.

Ready for the best part? You determine the winner. That's right -- the winning film will be chosen by audience voting, based on the one-to-five-star rating scale you know and love.

Updates made to the Inbox and My Contacts features are now live for all YouTube users. After announcing the beta launch for these features a couple of weeks ago, we made some changes to the Inbox based on your feedback. Now mini-thumbnails appear on the list of messages for video responses and videos users have shared with you. Also, the link to view all comments has been restored in email notifications for comments made to your videos and responses to comments of your own.

We'd really like to hear what you think about the newest versions of Inbox and My Contacts, so please share your feedback with us via video, email or leave a comment on this blog.

In case you hadn't noticed the athletes sprinting, crawling and vaulting all over our homepage today: we're happy to present videos of the growing sport of parkour, selected by Julie Angel aka SlamCamSpam. Julie is a London-based film-maker who has been documenting the sport for the past four years, mainly with an organisation called Parkour Generations -- a team of incredible athletes based in London, including some first- and second-generation parkour practitioners, dedicated to teaching and displaying the sport.

So, what is parkour? Dan Edwardes, a member of Parkour Generations describes it this way:

"Parkour is the art of moving through your environment using only your body and the surroundings to propel yourself. It can include running, jumping, climbing, even crawling, if that is the most suitable movement for the situation. Parkour could be grasped by imagining a race through an obstacle course, the goal is to overcome obstacles quickly and efficiently, without using extraneous movement."

Parkour traces its origins to Lisses, France, and a soldier named Raymond Belle, who worked to develop efficient methods "to reach or escape." He handed down these lessons to his son David Belle, who has spent a majority of his 34-years on the planet working on these principles, and is featured in one of Julie's 12 selections. The sport, or discipline, has drawn on myriad sources, been inspired by a number of notable individuals and evolved through several traditions to arrive at the modern iteration known as parkour. The sport's beauty and broad appeal may lie in the fact that it's not that different from what we all did as children: run, jump, roll. Parkour turns our confining concrete landscapes into a big playground.

We couldn't help notice the rising profile of parkour on our site and are proud to play a role in spreading it worldwide. The sport's bounding popularity is growing, in part, thanks to the spread of online video sharing, and, well, YouTube. Parkour may be the first such sport in history to have this symbiotic relationship with online video.

We hope this inspires you to learn more. Before you go running into the street, though, please understand that parkour can be dangerous if not practised correctly, please seek experienced trainers and practice diligently.